Come@Me: Bald Eagles Are Tools

I remember my first Bald Eagle so vividly. I dragged the guy I had just started seeing (reader, I married him) on a frosty February morning to an eagle walk at Croton Point Park (Croton-on-Hudson, NY). We pulled into the parking lot, got out of the car, and before I’d even had a chance to pull my binoculars out of my backpack, an adult eagle soared right over our heads. I swooned, too transfixed to grab my camera, and marveled at the bird’s majesty.

Soon enough I caught up with the group, and we made our way to an overlook along the Hudson River. It was a pretty frigid winter that year, and there were ice floes, which is why so many eagles were appearing so far south. So we were treated to, gosh, I think a dozen birds over the course of our viewing.

After the parking lot flyover, though, the second-most memorable bird is the one that pretty much ruined eagles for me. As we stood in the cold, punching up the zoom on our bins, we saw plenty of gulls (Ring-bills, I assume) riding the floes. One had just caught some type of fish from the river. But before it could go down the hatch, a Bald Eagle swooped in and snatched it.

Fascinating wildlife viewing? Sure. But also proof that Bald Eagles are just tools.

Their thievery is well-noted. Just throw a rock on the Internet and you’ll hit a post about some slacker Bald Eagle making off with someone else’s catch. (They are literally kleptos! Although this bad behavior may run in the overall eagle Family.) I don’t know who the Elmwood Park Zoo (Norristown, PA) hired to write their Bald Eagle signage (below), but it’s lies—I bet that pair is planning their next heist.

Will I always stop whatever I am doing to watch a Bald Eagle careening overhead like the boss bird it alleges to be? Hell yes. But that doesn’t stop me from grumbling about how much they really are honest-to-god tools.

*****

Come@Me Week is a cheap ploy ginned up by some high priced consultants we at 10,000 Birds hired and then stiffed on the bill. We’re desperately trying to stay relevant in a bird blogosphere being decimated by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and memes. We here at 10,000 Birds have no shame and it was either this or lots of posts about woodcocks, boobies, and woodpeckers. All the posts in Come@Me Week are probably the opinions of the authors of said posts and no one else. Well, except maybe you. Weirdo. Agree? Disagree? We’ll see you in the comments. Or, more likely, on Facebook. Sigh…

The lowly Red-winged Blackbirds in suburban New York triggered Meredith Mann's interest in birds. Five years later, she's explored some of the the USA's coolest hotspots, from Plum Island in Massachusetts to the Magic Hedge in Chicago to the deserts of Fallon, Nevada. She recently migrated from the Windy City (where she proudly served as a Chicago Bird Collision Monitor, rescuing migrants from skyscrapers and sidewalks) to Philadelphia, where she plans to find new editing and writing gigs; keep up her cool-finds chronicle, Blog5B; and discover which cheesesteak really is the best. And she will accept any and all invitations to bird Cape May, NJ.